A controversy developed when it was revealed the Obama administration is willing to spend billions of dollars to fund offshore drilling in Brazil while blocking U.S. development of oil and natural gas resources by continuing environmental objections to opening U.S. offshore drilling, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Underlying the controversy was the disclosure that Obama-supporter and billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros bought a $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro SA in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding.

The sparks began flying when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page: “So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources?”

Corsi noted that Palin was particularly frustrated because she had campaigned for the White House with Republican Sen. John McCain in 2008 partially on the theme “Drill Now,” and she has experienced decades of living in Alaska where environmentalists have blocked drilling in ANWR.

“I’ll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards that America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America,” Palin wrote. “Come to Alaska and witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-systems.”

Within hours of Palin’s posting, the White House hit back.

Ben Smith of Politico wrote that the U.S. Export Import Bank disputed Palin’s attack, noting that the $2 billion loan to Brazil’s state-owned energy conglomerate Petrobras would not come from tax dollars.

What set off Palin was a Wall Street Journal editorial that lead with the headline, “Obama underwrites offshore drilling,” followed by the subtitle, “Too bad it’s not in U.S. waters.”

What underscored the controversy was that Petrobras notified the country’s National Petroleum Agency late Monday that the company had made yet a third huge oil find in the Campos Basin off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in the Atlantic Ocean, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“Brazil, a country that was once considered so devoid of oil that its auto industry has traditionally been fueled by sugar-derived ethanol, is now positioned to become a world leader in oil exports,” Corsi wrote, “thanks exclusively to deep-water oil exploration that has paid off.”

Red Alert has consistently argued that U.S. energy policy makes no sense when blocking offshore oil and natural gas exploration dooms the U.S. to continued dependency on foreign oil – especially at a time when the nation’s negative balance of trade and trillion-dollar deficits have caused the U.S. to hemorrhage the outflow of dollars when the nation can ill-afford the loss of foreign exchange reserves.

According to deep-earth theories, oil is abiotic, a natural product of the earth created in the earth’s mantle on an ongoing basis, not a biological product or “fossil fuel” created by biological debris, including dinosaurs, ancient forests or small biological agents such as plankton.

While abiotic theories are still not embraced by U.S. geologists, Ukrainian geologists are generally in agreement with Russia.

“What should be clear is that opening up the U.S. offshore continental shelf to drilling will increase the supply of U.S.-produced oil and natural gas over time,” Corsi wrote. “Rather than funding offshore drilling in Brazil, President Obama would be well advised to take on the environmentalists to fund offshore drilling in the United States.”

Corsi continued, “Obama’s policy choice is obvious when we realize that most environmentalists, like President Obama himself, derive from the radical left where ideological purity demands that offshore drilling, especially by the capitalist-motivated United States, must be viewed as evil.”

Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.”